A fake news story overstated Republican VP candidate Mike Pence's disagreement with the First Lady's criticism of Donald Trump.

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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential candidate, appeared on CBS This Morning on 14 October 2016 to respond to Michelle Obama’s remarks of a day earlier, in which she condemned Donald Trump’s idea of “locker room banter” as revealed in a recording of Trump’s lewd 2005 conversation from “Access Hollywood”:

The First Lady said Trump’s 2005 boast that women let him ““grab them by the pussy” because of his high public profile constituted “sexually predatory behavior”:

“I can’t believe that a candidate for the president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted. I feel it so personally. And I know that many of you do too, particularly the women.

The governor responded by asserting that he believed Trump’s denial of the wave of allegations of sexual assault that had been made against him since his 2005 remarks were made public:

I have a lot of respect for the first lady and the job that she’s done for the American people over the last seven and a half years. But I don’t understand the basis of her claim. I already spoke about my concerns about the language that he used in that 11-year-old video. What he’s made clear is that was talk — regrettable talk — on his part but that there were no actions and he’s categorically denied these latest unsubstantiated allegations.

But the Newslo fake news web site (under the Politicops.com domain), which publishes “hybrid” mixtures of fact and satire, published an exaggerated account of Pence’s remarks that amped up the vitriol:

The governor of Indiana also said that she “has no business” commenting on men and their “restroom talk,” as well as that that’s not “ladylike behavior.” “Now, I know that the word ‘lady’ is kind of in her job description, but it looks to me she’s not behaving like one, at least as of late,” he said. “If she was a real lady, she wouldn’t be commenting on men’s restroom talk and neglecting her own work and duties just so she could get a word out on a topic that she finds interesting for some reason.”

He continued, “If we had anyone else serving as the first lady, they would pretend like they hadn’t heard it and would be going about their business in a normal fashion. But no, Michelle Obama is so vulgar she’s not only being vocal about it, but she’s also convinced that her job title will add weight and significance to her words. And she may be fooling those who can’t see through her smoke screen, but the rest of us have her figured out. She can’t fool me, just like she can’t fool Donald Trump or any other conservative American who has the guts to think for himself.”

As we have often reported, Newslo and its affiliate sites typically start an article with a small dab of actual news before embellishing it to ridiculous extremes. In this case, only the opening paragraph of the story relayed anything like real news, while the rest was fabricated. Also, the quote used in the headline (“Michelle Obama Is the Most Vulgar First Lady We’ve Ever Had”) does not actually appear in the story.

Newslo has previously reported that Sen. Ted Cruz volunteered to run as a Democrat if needed, and that Sen. Marco Rubio had vowed to “get rid” of the Supreme CourtL, among other pieces of “satire.”

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Dear Reader,

Snopes.com has long been engaged in the battle against misinformation, an effort we could not sustain without support from our audience. Producing reliable fact-checking and thorough investigative reporting requires significant resources. We pay writers, editors, web developers, and other staff who work tirelessly to provide you with an invaluable service: evidence-based, contextualized analysis of facts. Help us keep Snopes.com strong. Make a direct contribution today. Learn More.